Add these books to your spring reading list
Spring on the Gold Coast means one thing: finally getting through that ever-growing TBR pile before summer swallows it whole. From a tradwife influencer’s time-travel nightmare to Emma Cline’s latest page-turner, these are the books we’re packing into our tote bags this season.
‘Yesteryear’ by Caro Claire Burke
There’s a reason everyone’s talking about this one. Natalie is a tradwife influencer with millions of followers and a picture-perfect homestead – until she wakes up in 1855 with no idea whether she’s hallucinating, hoaxed or trapped in something far darker. It’s already a GMA Book Club pick with an Anne Hathaway film adaptation in the works, so consider this your head start before everyone else catches on.
‘Lost Lambs’ by Madeline Cash
A debut so hyped it landed Dua Lipa’s stamp of approval, ‘Lost Lambs’ follows the Flynn family as their small coastal town spirals into gossip and chaos over an ‘arrangement’ gone wrong. It’s sharp, funny and more than a little unhinged – think Wes Anderson’s Royal Tenenbaums, if they were just a bit more relatable. Perfect for anyone who likes their family drama served with a side of chaos.
‘Mad Mabel’ by Sally Hepworth
Meet Elsie: eighty-one, gloriously grumpy, and no stranger to a cutting remark. When a body turns up near her quiet Melbourne lane, her past life as ‘Mad Mabel’ – convicted of murder at just fourteen – comes back to haunt her, and the media won’t leave her alone. Twisty, funny and unexpectedly tender, this is Hepworth at her best.
‘Queenie Is Working on It’ by Candice Carty-Williams
We’ve been waiting nearly a decade for this one. Queenie Jenkins is back, ten years on – thirty-three, thriving at work and decidedly not thriving in her love life, especially once a fertility scare sends her spiralling. It’s got all the heart and hilarity of the original, with just enough chaos to keep you up past your bedtime.
‘Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage’ by Belle Burden
Started as a Modern Love column, ended up a #1 New York Times bestseller. Burden picks apart the unravelling of her twenty-year marriage after her husband left without warning, searching for the clues she missed along the way. It’s raw, unflinching, and the kind of story you’ll want to discuss with every married friend you have.
‘Switzy’ by Emma Cline
Already longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize, Cline’s fourth book follows David, a retired executive with dementia, on a private flight across Europe to a Swiss assisted-dying clinic – his grip on the present slipping as childhood memories rush in to fill the gaps. It’s darkly funny in places and quietly devastating in others, and critics are calling it her sharpest work yet. Not exactly light reading, but worth every page.
‘The Wedding People’ by Alison Espach
Phoebe arrives at a luxury Newport hotel alone, in a green dress, with no luggage – and everyone assumes she’s there for the wedding taking over the property. She’s not, but that doesn’t stop her and the bride from becoming unlikely confidantes over one very chaotic weekend. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, it’s easy to see why this one won a Goodreads Choice Award.
‘I Who Have Never Known Men’ by Jacqueline Harpman
For something a little different: this quietly devastating cult classic follows the youngest of forty women imprisoned in an underground bunker with no memory of how they got there. When they finally escape, they find a world stripped bare, and the narrator must work out what it means to be human when there’s no one left to define it for her. Slim, strange and impossible to shake.
‘Ravensbourne’ by Amy Coomer
One for the locals: Gold Coast author Amy Coomer’s third novel is a YA mystery that kicks off when a teenager dies after taking a pill at a music festival. Maisie McDevitt is determined to find out who gave it to him, even if it means infiltrating the Year 12 drama students at an elite private school. Set across Varsity Lakes, Broadbeach, Miami and Surfers Paradise, it’s a familiar backdrop with plenty going on beneath the glossy surface.
What do you love about it?
Where did you start?